[rmnunez]

The conclusion Bush lied is premised mainly on insufficient evidence of his WMDs after intervention and on perceived exageration regarding allegations of terrorist ties.

From what I've read the terrorist ties claims have solid basis and have been substantiated, though governments have not been invaded before for having contacts with terrorists. I think circumstances changed after 911 so that the faintest terrorist connection was highly objectionable and quite actionable, the US wanted to make an example and highlight its "zero tolerance" approach on this. Nonetheless, Saddam's contacts with terrorists was not the most compelling justification adduced for intervention.

The WMDs were the ostensible reason for intervention. If you remember, this was something that the UN had spent a dozen years trying to document with two separate teams of inspectors. Saddam himself produced, after lenghty delays and at the last possible point in time, a 12 thousand page report detailing whatever proscribed weapons programmes his regime had undertaken -and some of them were so sensitive the US censored the materials so Syria (a rotating Security Council member at the time) could not derive any technical information for its own suspected efforts to obtain proscribed weapons.

After more than a decade of off and on weapons inspections from the UN with rather inconclusive reports neither confirming nor denying any WMDs, Bush delivered an ultimatum -come clean or there will be regime change. Saddam refused, Bush started pilling up troops, Saddam continued to stall. At some point there were more than enough US forces in the area to quickly overwhelm Iraqi forces and there was still no certainty one way or another over these forbidden weapons.

If this was a farse from the beginning, Saddam could have proven it really easily. If the UN's inspectors had genuinely "unfettered" access to whatever they wanted to see, they'd report there was nothing forbidden going on. But at the very end there still were ostancles, Blix himself said he had the impression Saddam was in procedural, but not substantive compliance. Whatever was meant by that, it was something short of complete compliance.

After intervention there was no smoking gun, so Saddam fooled everyone. If Bush was deceived into believing Saddam actually had proscribed weapons and evidently wouldn't cooperate and disclose their location nor provide adequate evidence of their destruction, why would Bush's reliance on this be deceptive? And if Bush really believed Saddam had WMDs, with all those troops deployed in the vicinity, how could Bush have gone along with a process that likely would have required years of UN inspectors documenting procedural, though not substantive compliance?